Nearly half a million customers left T-Mobile in Q1 2011

[Tangent]

Tmobiles reception is lowsy get dropped calls. Thats why they lost manny customers. Also the atet merger doesnt help.

T-Mobile's reception being significantly better than Sprint and Cingular in my area was actually why my wife and I switched to them 8 years ago. We've never had reception problems with T-Mobile since we switched either at home or when travelling. Now if T-Mobile was responsible for the spelling errors, then you'd have a good point...

 

[2strokenut]

The issue is not simply a matter of whether T-Mobile was well-managed or not. There are a lot of other factors that bear on the matter.

First, bear in mind that T-Mobile USA is a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, which is much larger than either AT&T or Verizon.

Second, note that, of all the possible 4G technologies, LTE is going to be needed to compete. AT&T and T-Mobile were given the right to market their "enhanced 3G" as "4G," but it's not nearly as fast as full LTE is going to be. Verizon, on the other hand, decided to go straight to LTE instead of adopting the interim "enhanced 3G." Because Verizon is going straight to LTE their deployment is lagging behind the others, but where you can get Verizon's 4G it is way faster than any of the "4G" speeds from the others. And finally, Sprint adopted WiMax instead of LTE because it is the cheapest 4G system. But WiMax has problems with building penetration, and even out in the open can never deliver the speeds that LTE can.

Now, as to AT&T and T-Mobile, each has problems. AT&T is cash-rich, but failed to bid enough at recent FCC auctions, with the result that they lack spectrum to fully deploy LTE. T-Mobile, on the other hand, has plenty of spectrum, but is strapped for cash. As to the latter comment, witness the fact that Deutsche Telekom recently offered their 7,000 US towers for sale-leaseback.

Now, was it mismanagement that caused Deutsche Telekom to become cash-strapped? You can say that if you like, and I won't argue the point. But if you think that is mismanagement, then I will argue that AT&T's being to tight to bid enough on the spectrum auctions was equally bad management.

In the final analysis, we all mess up from time to time. And sometimes the price we pay is high. And the bigger you are the bigger your screw-ups will be, and the higher the price you may have to pay.

The only difference between wimax and lte is frequency and software. They both can push the same speeds but wimax is capped at a lower speed while lte is not. The only reason wimax has building penetration issues is because it hasn't been fully built out.

Lets get our facts straight here before we repeat things often enough till it becomes fact...

 

[John Jason]

The only difference between wimax and lte is frequency and software. They both can push the same speeds but wimax is capped at a lower speed while lte is not. The only reason wimax has building penetration issues is because it hasn't been fully built out.

It is true that RF is tricky as hell. But it is also scientific fact that the higher the frequency the more straight line it is. And the web is replete with comments about poor building penetration with Wimax. Do you have any references to support your claim that the only problem with building penetration is lack of build-out?

Lets get our facts straight here before we repeat things often enough till it becomes fact...

If repeating things often enough made them fact the earth would be flat. On the other hand, everyone says that you will die if you don't get oxygen. That still seems to be fact. I don't see any correlation between how often something is repeated and truth.

 

[alostpacket]

I don't see any correlation between how often something is repeated and truth.

You've clearly never worked in politics!


/probably a good thing!

 

[Jimbo droid]

The major loss of those customers is the Atet merge attempt. Atet is a greedy company that likes to ripp its customers off by charging super high rates. In turn the merge would raise all tmobiles fair rates and make the cell phone rates a nightmare in the us and elsewhere. Tmobile lost alot of customers and they'll loose allot more if this deal falls thru.

 

[EricasMyTouch3G]

I am actually happy that I was able to wait until I found out that this merger/buyout/whatever may not happen. I had made it loud and clear that I was going to Sprint (Verizon, while having top of the line phones, is too expensive for my disability income) if it did. Now I don't have to.